July 2011 Guest Editor Alexander McCall Smith on Excellent Women...
Barbara Pym has been described as the Jane Austen of our times, and I would concur with this view. She created a whole world of people living rather mousy lives, illuminated with poignant detail. She is extremely funny in an understated way.
"The finest introduction to Barbara Pym" (The New York Times): a hilarious comedy of manners by the shrewdly observant British novelist often compared to Jane Austen One of Barbara Pym's richest and most amusing high comedies, Excellent Women has at its center Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman's daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those "excellent women," the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors-anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next door-the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
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"The finest introduction to Barbara Pym" (The New York Times): a hilarious comedy of manners by the shrewdly observant British novelist often compared to Jane Austen One of Barbara Pym's richest and most amusing high comedies, Excellent Women has at its center Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman's daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those "excellent women," the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted.
Excellent Women features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Family Drama, eBooks of the Month, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Paperback, Hardback, Ebook. Not Available.
Excellent Women was written by Barbara Pym and published by Penguin Classics an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group
Excellent Women has 231 pages
Yes it is part of Penguin Classics series
